Mail Tribune 100: April 16, 1914

April 16, 1914

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Posted Apr. 16, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Posted Apr. 16, 2014 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

April 16, 1914

Twenty members of the Medford Rifle and Pistol club, who have been shooting at paper targets for some time, will switch to Mexicans if their country issues a call for men. They will go as sharpshooters, and include some of the niftiest men on the trigger in these parts. They do not care to enlist, however, as plain trudgers in the ranks, but as artists in the gentle art of pumping lead into human frames from a tree. That is a sharpshooter's business, along with protecting the officers by fancy shooting. The list of volunteers has not been made out.

Grim visaged war rumors sent thrills and chills up and down the backbones of the Seventh company members. Among some it produced the same sinking feeling as when Col. Tengwald read a fake telegram of being ordered to the front, while others fairly bristled with desire to be at the front fighting for John D. Rockefeller, the Hearst interests and the flag of their country.

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After a night of hysterical weeping for the mother and anxiety for his father, Willis Stockham, aged 9 years, appeared at the Jackson school this morning as the janitor was doing his morning work, and was returned to his parents. Where he had spent the night or where he had been the youth refused to tell despite the persuasions of his parents.

Young Stockham disappeared yesterday afternoon around 4 o'clock, and when he failed to return home at nightfall his parents began a search. The father is foreman of the Southern Pacific section gang, and it was reported that the boy had been kidnapped by Italians as revenge for labor troubles, but there had been no labor troubles.

Practically all of the able-bodied residents of North Front Street engaged in the search for the youth until midnight, and then adopted a "watch and wait" policy until breakfast time, with good results.